Another trip back to Battery Dantzler shows the place getting some well deserved loving care.  Here two Sons of Confederate Veterans, Eric on the left, and Cuda on the right, are working to finish the hand rail on the new viewing platform and ramp at the Battery Dantzler overlook.

And this is the view from the overlook, with the underbrush also cleared away by one of the local Boy Scouts.  This gives you a beautiful view of the river, and lets you see what a command Battery Dantzler had of the James river, 80 feet about the water here.

And this shows you the gun platform, again beautifully cleared away and maintained by one of the local Boy Scouts (If somebody can send me his name, I'll add it here.)

Blandford Church, just after the fall of Petersburg.  Blandford church was built in 1737, and had been abandoned and was in ruins by the civil war, but still saw use as a field hospital. During the Battle of the Crater, General William Mahone led three brigades through the cemetery for the counterattack, and General Gordon formed his troops up here for the early morning attack on Fort Stedman.

Blandford Church today, with my favorite Confederate flag flying, "The Blood-Stained Banner."

One of the graves.  It reads "Captain James B. Read. Died Nov. 13 1884.  Aged 71 years.  A Soldier of the Southern Confederacy."

The memorial to members of  the famous New Orleans Washington Artillery who died during the siege of Petersburg.

A picture of the fallen gravestone of G.W. Slifer, a member of the Stonewall Brigade who was killed just before the end of the war.

The gateway into the section that holds about 30,000 unknown Confederate remains, most buried in common graves.

The monument to the unknown Confederate soldier in Blandford Cemetary.

General William Mahone's mausoleum.  The "Hero of the Crater," the diminutive Mahone led his troops through the cemetery to the right of this picture on the way to repelling the Union assault through the Crater.  Blandford Church was a Union objective, never reached during the assault, on the way in to Petersburg.

Posted by Indiana Reb on: Friday 1st December 2006, 9:47 AM

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Fort Brady and Battery Abbot (Final Part)

Battery Abbot, click the pic for a larger version. Battery Abbot is gone. Not gone as in, they built a house on it, or the earthworks have eroded away, or there's a parking lot over it. No. Gone, as in "'is metabolic processes are now 'istory! 'E's off the twig! 'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile!! THIS IS AN EX-BATTERY!!" Battery Abbot is gone. Where I should be walking out onto a bluff, I am instead teetering on a knife edge ridge, looking down thirty feet into the perfect round bowl of a crater. Battery Abbot has been destroyed - without a trace, leaving nothing behind, not even the dirt.  I've never seen a place so thoroughly, so utterly "not there." I can't go directly down into the crater, I have to go down the knife edge ridge down to the water's edge, and then into the bowl.

This is a crude overhead view map - best I can do - showing you the ravine on the right, the bluff, and this huge round hole scooped out of the bluff, right to the water's edge. I have no idea what to make of this. My first thought is somebody blew it up.  Who?  It wasn't during the Civil War, the trees don't look any older than 30 - 40 years old.  So maybe in the 60s or 70s. I look for signs of erosion, but there is no stream, no sign of erosion.  In fact, the sides are remarkably perpendicular, the entire crater gives a feeling of freshness, although it's obviously a good number of years old.  I wonder if it was excavated, but why here, and why so round.? I walk over to the water.  It's flat here, just a simple stroll across the bowl floor to the water, instead of a steep drop to the water's edge from thirty feet above. Perhaps the water undercut the bank and it fell into the river?  But the hole is on the lee side of the ravine, and the river would be unlikely to do that.

Ok, you need to click on this picture, because that small version doesn't show it well.  But start looking at the top left, the bare clay, and follow the slope down the picture, and you'll get a sense of the steepness and roundness of the crater.  And crater is the only word that fits - it looks like a bomb crater, or like a meteor hit.  The center of the bowl is right down to water level - I can only imagine how much dirt has been removed from here, and why. Maybe the property owner didn't want his land polluted by a Yankee fort, and packed it with dynamite and blew it sky high. It's as good an answer as any, and I take a few more pictures, kind of stunned by what I've found.  I can see a bulldozed or excavated or demolished fort, except there is absolutely no reason to have done so here. I have no idea why Battery Abbot is gone.  But it's gone. I take one last shot at solving the mystery.  Of course, I do it obliquely. I'm at the Petersburg visitor center, looking for info on Battery Dantzler.  "Oh, you need Richmond for that," says the woman behind the counter.  She calls Richmond, and in a moment she passes it over and I'm on the phone with Bob. He offers me a number of ways to get the info I need, and one of them is to drop by and see him. I choose that one. After the call ends, I'm writing down the info.  I realize I didn't get Bob's last name. "Krick" she tells me. I stop writing, and look up.  Bob Krick.  The Bob Krick? I don't even have to say a word - she just smiles and says "It's his son.  Bob Krick Junior. The senior retired. You know, anyone who's any sort of an aficionado knows who Bob Krick Senior is." She's cute, she loves the Civil War, and she uses words like "aficionado" in a sentence.  Is it wrong to check for a ring? Anyway, I go to meet Bob Krick, who is well on the way to becoming a legend himself.  I ask him what happened to Battery Abbot, figuring if anyone knows, Richmond would. He shakes his head.  He knows about Battery Abbot.  It hasn't been forgotten in Richmond.  But he doesn't know what happened to it.  Whatever it was, it managed to bypass the record keeping.  It's on private property, outside the jurisdiction of the Park Service, and always has been, so anything could have happened. Battery Abbot is just gone. There are many places on private property that are still here, but they aren't protected.  And they can be gone in a blink. Like Battery Abbot. Gone

Posted by Indiana Reb on: Wednesday 29th November 2006, 11:44 AM

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Fort Brady - Battery Abbot Part 4

Ok, this is our pic of Battery Abbot.  I've highlighted the curve of the river and the bulge of the hill sticking out.  The line on the bottom of the pic shows the ravine.  Click here for the big picture- I have really boosted the contrast on the big pic so you can see the cliffs that drop away to the river.  At Battery Abbot, they sloped the embrasures slightly, but there is still a sheer drop of at least 20 - 30 feet at the far right.!

This is shot from almost the exact same location.  You can see how the curve of the river lines up in the same place.  The hill looks a bit off to me though.  I've go the top pic printed and in my hand when I take the lower pic, and while it's hard to see clearly through the trees, something seems a bit off.  Clearly, it's the right spot.  But I thought I might even be able to see earthworks from here, but the trees kinda mess it up, so I start down into the ravine to have a look. In the top picture, there is a ravine, then as far as the eye can see, a bluff with a 30 to 40 foot almost sheer drop to the water. It's a steep climb down, but not a big deal. I climb up the other side, getting excited as I near the top.  Battery Abbot, at last.  After a week of searching, I've found it. I reach the top, and I'm ready to walk across the top of the bluff and up to the walls of Battery Abbot. And I see this - Click here

Posted by Indiana Reb on: Tuesday 28th November 2006, 7:38 PM

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